Swatch It Up | Essie - Belugaria

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Many of you, myself included, were very curious about the Essie polish I received in my September Chatelaine Topbox as it is a polish that has yet to be released for this Christmas season. Essie-Belugaria is from the Encrusted Treasures Collection set to be released this November. The idea behind this collection is to achieve a caviar nail minus the hassle of applying the beads and have them last just as long as regular polish! So, how did the swatch turn out? Interesting to say the least!

I found application to be awful…there wasn’t enough liquid in the polish to apply more than two strokes per nail which made the texture quite lumpy. Application was also quite messy for me as I could not get the brush to apply the polish in a nice curve at the cuticle. There was just too much “caviar” per stroke for me to make this look pretty and unfortunately this manicure lasted all of 24 hours for me as a client even commented that it looked like I had 70 grit sandpaper on my nails (compliment?). The texture was so rough that I even hurt my face! This polish is different from a textured polish in that you can see from the photos that the beads are uneven in application unlike a textured polish.

Overall, I do like the idea of adding the caviar look to the polish itself and the hex glitter totally caught my eye, but the application was so unpleasant that I don’t know if I want to put myself through this again. The look is actually quite nice, but sadly my experience with this polish was not. I love Essie polishes, but I’m going to have to say no to Belugaria.